Beneath the Fading Sky
by Euregatto
Summary: "...because there's something about your eyes that reminds me of everything so close to my reach, the sea, the sky, the waterfalls and the frozen earth… and I cannot have it. Not unless you let me." -Eren/Annie, smut


**A/N**: Christmas lemon :D Has nothing to do with Christmas. Sorry guys. But drop a review and tell me how it turned it, okay~?

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The night around them is brimming with gasps and pants that are abruptly muffled when he seals their lips, humming against her as he glides a single finger into the slick velvet of her womanhood, her walls clenching around the sudden intrusion. She moans his name when he breaks off, moving his mouth down the centerfold of her body to her naval, leaving a scorching trail of fire along her skin.

He laps at her tender nipples and pumps in and out, painfully slowly, stroking her exposed side with his free hand, her pallid skin as soft and vibrant as powdered snow. His thumb rocks along her clit at a steady tempo.

"Fuck," she whispers, one arm crossed over her face to hide her blush and conceal her eyes, free hand fisted in the sheet. "Stop teasing me…"

An amused chuckle rumbles in his throat but he passes up a response. He slides his middle two fingers deep within her warmth and strokes her walls carefully, gradually forcing her to expand, brushing his calloused palm against her swelled clit with every motion. She can barely bite back her cries and writhes beneath his rigid touch, _cursing her own body for reacting to his touch like he was everything she would ever need. And right now she needs _**_this_****_ -_**_ she _**_needs_**_ him to curls his fingers _**just like****_ that_**.

His free fingers tangle with hers, pinning her hand beside her head to distract her wandering touch. "Make me come," she utters, rocking her hips down on him desperately. "Eren, _please_… make me come…"

He strokes her in all the right places, pressing up against a sensitive bundle of nerves, threatening to send her over the edge into something she does not know. He draws her perked nipple into the heated cavern of his mouth and _sucks_, her hands flying up to grasp the ends of his hair. **"Ah!"**

He breaks away with a smirk, pressing his lips to the tender point of her neck. "For a normally quiet loner," he muses, nipping at her bruised skin, "you sure are loud."

"Cork it," she rebounds but her threatening tone is all but gone, replaced by a feeble strain, raspy and breathless. She arcs her back and presses her hips down again as he pumps faster, the flat of his palm roughly stroking her clit in an almost pained bliss, sending her closer towards an explosive euphoria she cannot comprehend, not yet, not quite. The feeling is unfathomable, something she cannot explain that can still be understood without being able to justify its existence.

"I love your eyes," he whispers into her ear.

The coil in her torso is a tense void, muscles collapsing with the strength she did not know she possessed, body subconsciously attempting to reject the unknown force of ecstatic fire by inching as far away from the flame as she can, legs snapping closed to nullify the apparition of desperation, but his arms force her thighs open again, his tongue lapping at her swelled nipple. She lets the noises in her chest escape, allows them to erupt outwards, overwhelm the air and embody the sheer exhilaration of her upmost desires.

She has forgotten how to breathe, to speak or blink or control her own self as her head tosses back and her fists grab at the only things she can get – his hair and the sweat-soaked sheets beneath her.

And that's when something within her breaks.

Annie Leonhardt sits up with a start, the phantom pleasure racking through her body from her brain to her toes and reverberating back through her nerves, her body quaking dangerously as the invisible graces of his fingertips leave her skin along with the remnants of her dream. Her nails grasp her sheets as she searches for something to ground herself, to know that she is awake and whatever the hell just happened didn't actually _happen_.

"Annie?"

Gathering herself piece by piece, she gradually turns to the girl kneeled beside her. "Mina?"

"You okay?" The girl asks quietly. "You were making some weird noises in your sleep. I thought you were hurt."

Annie notices that the dark of the cabin indicates the still nighttime hours and she wonders just how long she's been asleep for, her sense of time thwarted by the parcels of her dream still floating about the back of her head.

"Hey, Mina?" Annie starts carefully and her bunkmate answers with a small 'hm?'. "Have you ever…" She ponders her next words carefully, because she knows better than anyone Mina will not let her live this down. _Have you ever had a dream where you slept with someone… like sex slept… oh, I don't know… let's just say, for example, with Eren Jaeger? How the hell would you make eye contact with him ever again? _"Never mind, it was just a bad dream."

Mina shoots her a sideways glance. "Was it a dream about Eren again?"

Annie presses her lips into a thin line, refusing to respond, knowing she doesn't have to.

"If you have feelings for him, you may as well tell him before the stress gets any worse or-"

"I'm fine," she says briskly, decidedly making an attempt to climb over Hannah to her right and swing her legs over the edge of the bed against the ladder. "I'm getting some air. Go back to sleep."

Unconvinced but as equally unwilling to dwell on it, Mina watches the blonde hightail it out the door and decides to save her usual implicative questions for later.

.

.

.

Sometimes Eren is uncomfortable with the constant prodding of the boys in the cabin.

It's his eighteenth birthday now, only a few weeks before graduation, and his day had been going pretty well – an extra serving of stew from Hannah and Marco working their shift in the kitchen, an old book from Armin he had read ten times over that depicted the tale of a young man living by the sea, sparring with Annie and Reiner despite Annie acting noticeably off that even Reiner was concerned, and sitting by the river side catching up with Mikasa since they haven't talked as much lately – up until now, however, now that the guys have decided to conclude his spectacular day with a typical night of… well, being boys.

"So now that you're an official adult," Reiner begins, voice directed at Eren who is attempting to read his book (even though he has never come across as a real novel enthusiast), "are you going to date anytime soon? Maybe wrestle a ring on her finger?"

"I'll marry when I choose to," Eren shoots back, having to start the page over due to the distraction, "right now I'm focused on my training so I can kill Titans."

Reiner snorts unattractively. "Are you sure that's all your focused on?"

Eren doesn't like the underlying suggestion in Reiner's voice. His quizzical, equally suspicious as it was dangerous, gaze casts over to the blond only three beds down to his left. "What are you getting at?"

"I'm talking about Annie man," he answers matter-of-factly, "you have to admit, since we were first recruited she's gained some weight in the more… desirable areas. We all know you like to hang out with her more than you like to breathe."

"We're sparring partners."

"So are you railing her or what?"

"I am not _railing_ her," he spits back, digging his chin into the pillow and casting his glare elsewhere.

"I bet she would want you to," Jean taunts. "I'll even guess she likes to pleasure herself to the thought of you."

"Shut the fuck up dude," the opposing trainee hisses. Eren's ears burn intensely at the thought however – of Annie with her golden hair splayed out on the pillow, body glistening with sweat; of her gliding her fingers down her porcelain skin and slipping them right inside the apex between her legs, gasping his name, trembling with pleasure, thumbing at her perked nipple. Her lips are parted, throat clogged with harsh pants, her back arching as she manages to hit some sweet spot within her, the intense scent of her fluids fueling his mind. He can feel the pressure building somewhere down south.

And all the while he can see her eyes, as perfect as the summer sky, clear and hazy at the same time, watching him watching her. _There's something about her eyes –_

_Fuck, not this again._

"What, did I hit a nerve? Or are you the one who jacks off when no one's looking?"

"I'm going throw myself across this room and break your neck, Horseface!"

"Okay!" Armin exclaims, wafting his hands aimlessly. "Let's just calm down… Hey, wait, Eren! Where are you going?!"

The boy is already at the door, in nothing more than his undershirt and too loose pants with his book in his grasp. "I'm going somewhere quiet to read," he snaps, storming through the threshold. "You assholes can go get hitched."

The door slams shut and, after nearly half a minute of an awkwardly misplaced silence, Jean scoffs. "Moody much?"

Outside the cabin where no one can hear him and he can ignore them just as effectively, Eren leans against the railing of the porch with his free hand curled around the beam, disregarding the splinters digging into the exposed flesh of his fingers, his knuckles bleeding white. He abortively tries to suppress that damn mental image Jean has coaxed into the front of his mind.

Then a new thought explodes forward – Annie's firm grasp, vice-like and delicate, as if she is trying to teach him a new move, presses against the throbbing bulge between his legs, curls around the column of his shaft as she rolls her palm up, almost tracing the stitches in the fabric dividing him from her. Her knuckles create uneven pinpoints of pressure along the gradually solidifying –

**_Stop._**

He curses under his breath and attempts to flip open to the page he left off at in his book, but the words immediately jumble and his brain malfunctions, still absorbed in the fantasies he fails to ignore. Because every time he can see her eyes – those goddamn flawlessly blue eyes – staring right through him, reading him like the open book between his shaking hands. _There's something about her eyes._

_"Maybe they're just triggered figments of the feelings you have for her,"_ Armin had offered when Eren last confided in him over the issue.

_But what the hell am I supposed to do about it? I can't afford to have feelings. There are armies of Titans I need to kill!_

Something shifts in his peripheral vision and he snaps his weary gaze over to the girls' cabin porch. Annie is seated on the bottom step, boots scuffing up lopsided circles in the dirt, her normally frigid gaze fixated on the dark of the sky where the full moon hangs limply against the stars. Cautiously, Eren approaches her, tucking the book under his arm. She doesn't seem bothered by his presence, even as he draws up to the front of her knees.

"What are you doing out here?"

"I can't sleep," she bluffs, refusing to meet his stare. "You?"

"Same." He takes a moment to let the silence settle between them before gesturing to the step. "You look like you could use some company. Mind if I sit?"

She shakes her head once, a barely noticeable movement that almost passes for a twitch. He dusts off the step and perches beside her. His fingers drum against the hard cover of the novel. "The guys were bothering me when I was looking at this book Armin gave me, so I came to get some quiet."

"Oh, it was your birthday, wasn't it? Happy birthday."

"Thanks." Eren studies her for several seconds, the way her gaze wanders aimlessly from detail to detail in the sky or the cabins or the forest, never once bothering to pay him any mind. She's avoiding something, something that he knows is bothering her. "…I'll read to you," he declares finally, flipping open to the page his oak leaf bookmark resides in. It was almost impossible to remember it's location before with his mind set on…other things. "How's that sound?"

"I'm surprised you even know can."

"Har har," he retorts, thumbing out the leaf. "I'm about half way through so it probably won't make any sense."

Annie finally allows her eyes to fall on him, sapphire orbs piqued with a renewed curiosity she wouldn't ever admit to. "Catch me up then."

Eren shoots her a sideways glance as he attempts to register the fact that **_Annie Leonhardt just agreed to letting him read to her. _**"Well, it's about this guy who lives on land, but he has a fishing boat that he takes out on the open sea!" He gestures out with his arms, pretending almost childishly that the ground around them is the ocean itself, book splayed out in his lap. "It's this vast lake the goes on for miles, farther than the eye can see and deeper than any human go! And it's filled with so much salt everyone could be rich for the rest of their lives!"

Annie places her chin recumbently on her fist and he knows he has her attention.

"So this guy Caspen takes the boat and a few friends to go fishing one day, and a huge storm rolls through. When he wakes up, he has no idea where he is. There is water on all sides, and he can't see the main land." Eren strokes his finger along the page. "He's been fighting for survival with his two friends and their minimal rations, but one is terribly sick, they don't think he's going to make it… And just this chapter, a giant serpent rose out of the water to confront them! It's like a snake with gills and fins, and these scales so clear they blend into the water."

"Sounds a little farfetched to me," she voices.

"It's a story for a reason," he amends and turns his attention to her face. He sees it in her eyes, the snow in the winter and the summer sky and the rapids of the rivers all tucked up beneath a set of crystals as clear as the serpent's scales. She's just as dangerous, he figures, as if she harbors a set of jaws that could pierce flesh and a thrill for a good hunt, in some morbidly beautiful, poetic way.

"Have you ever wanted to see the ocean?" She questions, catching his stare.

He gradually turns to his open page, his thumb running circles over the crippled oak leaf in his grasp. "I think I've already seen it." _Because there's something about your eyes that reminds me of everything so close to my reach, the sea, the sky, the waterfalls and the frozen earth… and I cannot have it. Not unless –_

He tucks the leaf back into the book and slams it shut, and before she can testify he grasps her face and presses his lips to hers, not too gently but not so hard, a perfect balance between the two where the forest meets the sky, where the land melds into the ocean's edge and is consumed, mercilessly, by the abysmal darkness of the waters. It feels explosive, like the first time she knocked the wind out of him when she flipped him onto his back, where the world in his vision melded into one and divided itself between them once more.

_–not unless you let me._

She figures they can save the reading for later and lets him work at her lower lip, sucking it insistently so it swells between his teeth. He glides his tongue, undeterred and welcome, into the cavern of her dripping mouth, coaxing her own tongue to push back against his. The friction intensifies between them – like a lightning storm above the forest in the once blue sky – as he massages something sensitive, igniting her blood, her pupils dilating with a surge of adrenaline.

He effortlessly lifts her up so he's standing and she's hooking her legs around his waist, his hips bucking to rub their pelvises together, her clit stimulated through her shorts by the throbbing bulge between his thighs. A raspy moan vibrates every bone in her chest. He carries her straight around to the hidden alley between the two buildings and rams her back against one of the walls, forgetting, within that moment, which cabin was which, and realizing all the same, he didn't actually care.

His hands slide up her shirt, calloused against her soft skin, exploring every inch of her slender torso. He can feel her clenching muscles beneath his fingertips as he rocks his body against hers, the way her gut inflates and collapses when she gasps his name, how her ribs press out against the walls of her flesh. Her fingers need at the untamed strands of his hair, her nails grinding into the back of his neck, threatening to break his skin but barely harming the surface.

They cling to each other with _want_ and _need_ and _desperation_ and _blithe_, afraid to let go, matching their movements to the natural rhythm of their heartbeats so they almost become one, a whole, so close to _perfect_ and still so _broken_.

"I always knew," she pants out, gasping when his lips trail pinpricks of fire along the arch of her neck, "my eyes were your favorite feature."

"And what gave you that clue?" he muses.

**_I love your eyes – _**

"You're like an open book," she lies.

"Yeah," he agrees, lapping at the bruise forming on the plane of her exposed skin. "That's what I figured."

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Eren reads to her every night, half a chapter or a whole, dependent on how taxed his body was from the day's events; reads it to her twice over before he begins to ask if she's bored of it, only to remember that crystals don't talk, but if they did, she would be questioning the credibility of the author and the knowledge of the ocean, and he would tell her, "I can't say. Everything I know about the world is in your eyes."

One day he gives the book back to Armin, because in the end it's just a story the same as any other, and frankly, he's grown quite tired of the sea.

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End file.
